The moment that explosive mental cocktail enters the public domain the truth becomes largely irrelevant. It no longer matters that the vast majority of this England squad are hard-working, honest, polite young men dying to make their country proud at this Rugby World Cup. All they will see at home are the photos on Facebook, the nudge-nudge headlines and the recriminations. Should it matter if a rugby player gets drunk on his night off? If he is a professional sportsman representing England at a World Cup it is hardly the brightest move, whether blown out of proportion by the tabloid media or not.

No one, the Queen included, will be less amused than Martin Johnson. On the eve of departure he spoke of his absolute trust in his 30-man squad to handle themselves in a mature manner. "They are there to make sensible decisions … if I can't trust them there is a simple choice for us to make," he said last month. The next thing he knows his captain, Mike Tindall, is splashed across the Sun and the internet is awash with pictures of visibly worse-for-wear England players messing around late at night. They should have stuck to safer stuff like bungee-jumping and canyon-swinging.

For what it's worth, those players involved apparently did nothing more scandalous than visit a bar, pose for a few pictures and return unaccompanied to their lakeside hotel. They even went out with the full permission of the management, who purposely chose Queenstown as a base this week to allow the players to relax following last Saturday's tough game against Argentina. The locals have not been remotely offended. "They were great lads, not throwing the midgets, it was all light-hearted, good-humoured fun," insisted Rich Deane, manager of Queenstown's Altitude Bar. So that's all right then. Prince Harry wasn't even there.

But hang on. You would not catch the entire All Black squad doing something similar at this tournament. Nor the Wallabies. And they just happen to be the best teams in the world. They also happen to be coached by two hard-bitten Kiwis – Graham Henry and Robbie Deans – who know precisely how to manage 30 testosterone-filled blokes with plenty of evenings to fill. One England player, who had better remain nameless, said he could not believe his team management had allowed the squad to go out and get "as leathered as we did". To which Johnson would presumably respond that he was not the one pouring the drinks down his players' throats.

The root of the problem is that modern professional rugby players cannot quite decide how they want to be perceived. Do they want to be showbiz celebrities, living the high life, marrying into the royal family and enjoying all the financial trappings, at a significant cost to their anonymity? Or do they want to carry on in time-honoured fashion: working hard and playing harder, confident in the knowledge that whatever goes on on tour stays on tour and that 90% of the country still think Lawrence Dallaglio is captain of England? Doing both, in this era of smartphones and dim athletes, is increasingly unrealistic. We are not talking here, to be clear, about the odd quiet drink but serious late-night revelry. You do not have to be recently married into royalty to become public property when you are captaining England at a World Cup in New Zealand.

Johnson should know this better than anyone. He was at home attending the birth of his second child in June 2008 when a handful of England players were led astray in Auckland's Pony Club, but he has made clear he expected no repeat on his watch. "We speak about it whenever we go away and we'll do that again when we hit the ground," he said a fortnight ago. "We have got to be careful. It is a different world to what it was 20 years ago. I remember going to New Zealand as a British Lion in 1993 and the boys had good fun but they have got to be careful not to put themselves and their team mates at risk."

So why, then, did he give his squad carte blanche to get on it in New Zealand's adventure capital, having played one of their four pool games? The royal aides who have been frantically trying to reach Tindall on the phone are not alone in wondering what on earth is going on.

As it happens, Lewis Moody is due back for Sunday's game against Georgia and will lead the side, with Tindall expected to be rested. The public relations damage, though, has already been done. People have seen the dwarf-tossing headlines and the bungee-jump pictures and will probably leap to their own conclusions. Woe betide England if they now fall short of expectations in the weeks to come. Back home they will no longer be giving them the benefit of the doubt.